Knowledgebase

Unlock IP

If you cannot access your email or your website, this can be caused (among other reasons) because the security system of your hosting has blocked your IP. This can happen because you have tried to access your email, webmail or CPanel account with the wrong user or password repeatedly (it also happens when you configure with erroneous data your email account in your email manager like Outlook, Mail, etc).

We will explain step by step how to check if your IP address is blocked and how to unlock it in case it is. In the last point we will explain why the security systems of your hosting block your IP address:

2 - Secondly, we will log in using our customer email address and client password.

Note: This email address and password do not correspond to the email address we have blocked, this email address corresponds to the email address we have registered in the client area of Publitony and to which we receive all notifications such as invoices, tickets, etc. If you do not remember the password, click on the link FORGOT PASSWORD? And you will be sent a new password (if the email you would have to get the new password is the same as the one you have locked, skip to point 7 and then return to point 2).

3 -Thirdly, once we have accessed our client area, select from the top menu: UNBLOCK IP

4 - Now we will see a page where we indicate to us the different hosting services that we have hired, click on the PADLOCK Click on the padlock on the right that corresponds to the hosting on which we want to unlock our IP, if you have more than one hosting service and do not know what to select the padlock, select all.

5 -When you click on the padlock on the right, we will see a popup window indicating our IP automatically, (if this process of unlocking is done directly from the device on which we have blocked services leave the IP that appears to us automatically as is, but if we want to unlock the IP of another device that is different from where we are doing this process, we will have to manually indicate the IP address of that device. If you do not know the IP address of that device, you would have to access (from the device you want to unlock) to the address: www.ip.publitony.com and there will be the IP of the device from which you are accessing that Web address, that IP address that appears on the screen, you have to replace it for the other one that appeared automatically) and click on the UNLOCK button.

6 -Now, if our IP address was blocked, it will be unlocked and a message will appear in the upper right corner indicating the reason for the lock and the blocked services are already working. In case our IP was not blocked, it will also appear to us a message in the top right, in this case, if it still does not work the email or its web page is not displayed, it is not due to an IP blocking, it is due to another problem. In this case, please contact us as soon as possible by sending an email or opening a new ticket from the top menu of your customer area OPEN TICKET.

Note: Although we have already unlocked our IP, if we are still entering the username or password incorrectly (or the configuration of our manager of emails is wrong) again we will be blocking the IP, so we will have to carry out the process of unlock IP again and as soon as possible should verify which is correct the username or password so that your IP is not blocked again. When you need to reconfigure your email manager configuration data, check that before correcting the configuration data your IP is unblocked, since even if you put the right data, these will not work because your IP is blocked. As a recommendation, once has reconfigured it with the correct data, unlock the IP again.

It is also important to know, that if you have several devices connected to the same network or wifi and since one of them is accessed repeatedly with incorrect login details to an email or cPanel account (or emails Manager configuration details are incorrect) , to block the IP from a device, email and web services will be inaccessible from all devices on the network, since they all share the same IP address. For unlocking only, it would be necessary to unblock a device, because others will be unlocked automatically, but if it turns again to block the IP (because it is still trying to access incorrectly or the emails manager configuration data are incorrect) again will stop working services email and web in all devices, so it would be essential to fix the problem on the device with the wrong settings.

7 -This step is only for those who could not complete step 2 because they forgot the password to access the client area and will try to recover it this was sent to an email address that can not access because the email service is blocked.

In this case would have several alternatives:

a) If blocking occurs on a device connected to a wireless network, turn off (if connected) your mobile device on the wifi network and connect directly to the network of your mobile phone. Once done go to your email account to which the password recovery link has been sent to you, once restored access to your client area password already can continue with step 2.

b)Turn off your router for 5-10 minutes and restart it, in many cases (but not always) when you turn it on again it connects to a new IP, which will not be blocked. Once this is done, access your email account to which the password recovery link has been sent. Once you have restored the access password to your client area, you can continue with step 2. (In the event that when restarting your router you have not been assigned a new IP this solution will have no effect, try another one).

c)Connect to the Internet from a different location than the one from where the blockade occurred (Your office, a relative's house, neighbor, friend, public Wi-Fi network, etc.). Once this is done, access your email account to which the password recovery link has been sent, once you have restored the access password to your client area, you can continue with step 2.

Why are IPs blocked as a security measure?

Now we are going to detail in a very summarized and simple way why our security systems block the IP when trying to access an email account, webmail, cPanel, etc, with erroneous access data on repeated occasions.

The hackers to attack websites or servers, what they do is try to many times per second to access this website or server. By launching so many access requests per second, server is saturable and falls or operates very slowly, and is when hackers take advantage of authentication and security mechanisms do not function properly and look for vulnerabilities to access emails, website, server, etc, accounts fraudulently.

Our servers, as a security measure to prevent these attacks by brute force or DDoS, incorporate a system, that if a particular time attempts to access incorrectly more than 5 times, the server will block the IP from where you are trying to access to do not keep trying and therefore fail to over-saturate the server and is not hacked.

This security measure works very well, but the problem is when a legitimate user tries to access your email account with bad access data (or has configured a wrong user or password in an email manager). Well, as you know, the email managers every X seconds / minutes are refreshed to download the new emails, well, if the password is wrong, the system will interpret that someone is trying to enter repeatedly with invalid access data, and therefore will believe that an attack is being suffered and will block that IP. The same happens when we try to access webmail or cPanel by repeatedly entering the data of invalid accesses in a short period of time.